Tag: detroit

When we started work on Awesome News Taskforce Detroit, I knew that getting a diverse group of people involved from the get-go was our No. 1 priority. In the case of Detroit, that diversity must include not just gender and racial diversity, but also geographical, class and organizational differences as well. As an experiment, I […] more »

I’m occasionally asked by well-intended fans of the Awesome Foundation if there are plans to ramp up our granting efforts, to go beyond the measly $1,000 each of our chapters offers every month so that we can fund higher-impact projects, especially now that we are entering the arena of community development and revitalization. While it’s […] more »

The citizen journalism and new media movements have made it increasingly possible for anyone to be heard in the media, first as sources and then as writers. But what if these interested and informed citizens became builders and innovators as well? The Awesome News Taskforce wants to empower anybody to create and test out community […] more »

If a large truck illegally barrels through a neighborhood and no reporters are around to see it, does it make the news? It does if local residents with mobile phones can text truck sightings to a local public radio station. This is the premise behind a new pilot project called Sourcing Through Texting from a […] more »

By now almost everyone knows that a group of demonstrators protesting against the killing of a young father by a transit officer splintered off and began a wave of destruction in downtown Oakland. Mainstream media outlets called it everything from a riot to a violent protest. Some bloggers referred to it as a civil unrest, […] more »